One of the most popular movie library plug-ins for Media Center recently added a new theme to it’s default install called Vanilla. Hidden inside this new theme is the ability to add movie trailers to the information screen for each movie. It’s not very simple and you’ll need to download the trailers manually but this is definitely a nice feature to have. Be sure to have one of the recent betas (2.0.10.0+) and turn on the Vanilla theme.

First you will need to download movie trailers to use with Media Browser. The easiest way to get them is to use a program such as HD Movie Trailer Downloader or Get Trailers. Download the trailers for each movie and place it inside that movie’s folder (or anywhere else you’d like to store them).

Once you’ve got your trailers downloaded it’s necessary to tell Media Browser where to find them. The Vanilla theme uses the old MyMovies.xml to find the location of trailers for each movie. You don’t need MyMovies installed or even the complete MyMovies.xml file to use this feature though. Just create a mymovies.xml file in each movies directory and place the following inside:

Now change the URL value to the location of the movie trailer for this movie and save the file. Be sure to save the file as “mymovies.xml” not “mymovies.xml.txt”. This will instruct the Vanilla theme that there is a trailer available for this movie and where it can be found.

Then just load up Media Browser and browse to that movie. You should now see an icon on the left hand side for the trailer. Press this button and Media Browser will begin to play the trailer for this movie in a small window above the movie information.

This could be an indispensable feature for those who find themselves forgetting exactly what a movie is about and aren’t into reading those drawn out synopsis descriptions. Plus there aren’t many better ways to convince others (like your wife!) that your movie selection is, in fact, worth watching.

Get the latest tips and tricks for Media Browser by subscribing to the Hack7MC RSS Feed or Follow on Twitter to get the most recent Media Center hacks!

I have a typical DVD root folder structure with DVD folders underneath for each movie (D:\DVD\10,000BC). I tried the steps above and got a trailer for the movie 10,000 BC and placed it in the root of D:\DVD\10,000BC\trailer.mov. When this file is placed in this directory I can no longer browse through media browser. When I go into media browser menu called DVD (which is pointing at D:\DVD) it just plays the trailer, completely ignoring the movie itself as well as all the other movies in the folder. As soon as I take out the trailer.mov all my DVD’s show back up and I can succesfully browse through each one. What am I doing wrong?

My .mov-files contains only a fraction of what the file should take. ~24,4 kb. I want the whole tailer to load in mediabrowser but how to download? The trailerbotton in mediabrowser works just fine if you load a 700mb .avi-file for example.

Is there an updated program to download local trailers? It seems that everything I find on this website is pretty old. The only solution people suggest is to use metabrowser but it doesn’t seem to scan my collection properly. Any ideas anyone?

Comment left June 18, 2013 at 12:34 am

Leave A Comment

Post Anonymously, Fill in your details or Use one of the Social Networks below to login and post a comment!

NameE-mailWebsite

Comment & Copyright Policy

Comments are open to all visitors, no email or login is required. Some comments may be held for moderation, try not to resubmit. Comments are also subject to moderation or removal by the administrators at any time after posting.

You are free to reuse, modify and redistribute content from this site under the condition that you provide proper attribution to the original work. Copyright 2009-2011 Michael Healy and Hack7MC.com under Creative Commons 3.0.